American justice announced Tuesday to have indicted four “Iranian intelligence agents” for having planned the kidnapping of an American reporter of Iranian origin in the United States.
The four men had sought since “June 2020” to kidnap “an author and journalist who highlighted human rights violations committed by the Iranian government,” the US Department of Justice said in a statement. They had planned “to take their victim by force to Iran, where (his) fate would have been at best uncertain,” said prosecutor Audrey Strauss.
A critique of the Iranian regime
Not named in the press release, feminist activist Masih Alinejad, behind the anti-veiling movement in Iran, said she was the target of this kidnapping project. “Thanks to the FBI for foiling the Iranian intelligence plan to kidnap me,” she said on Twitter, filming herself in front of a window from which a police car can be seen. According to her, the latter has been parked in front of her home for two weeks.
Iranian journalist and anti-veiling activist Masih Alinejad reveals she was the subject of an attempted kidnapping, foiled by the FBI https://t.co/HTpKGsVG7H
– VdeGraffenried (@VdeGraffenried) July 14, 2021
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From the United States, where she has now settled, Masih Alinejad criticizes the Iranian regime and its policies, and has received the support of stars such as Meryl Streep, whom she joined on stage at a conference on women’s rights, in 2016.
“In the eyes of the Iranian regime, any woman who fights for her fundamental rights is a criminal,” she said last April in a video message to the Swedish Parliament.
Other victims targeted
The agents had been looking for a way to transport the journalist out of the United States, one of them inquiring in particular about speedboats offering “an autonomous marine evacuation” from New York, and a trip by boat between New York. and Venezuela, a country which maintains “friendly relations with Iran”.
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This network, discovered by the FBI, also targeted other victims living in particular “in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates”, against whom they had tried to deploy the same means of surveillance, according to the prosecutors.
The four agents are Alireza Shavaroghi Farahani, Mahmoud Khazein, Kiya Sadeghi and Omid Noori. A fifth Iranian residing in California, Niloufar Bahadorifar, is suspected of having participated in the financing of this project.
“Every person in the United States must be free from all harassment, threats and physical harm from foreign powers,” said prosecutor Mark Lesko.
More than a dozen Westerners detained in Iran
Iran is considered one of the most repressive countries for journalists, and exercises “relentless” control of information according to the NGO Reporters Without Borders, which placed it 174th out of 180 in its world press freedom ranking in 2021. “This crackdown on freedom of information is not limited to the interior of the country,” said RSF, who estimates that since 1979, at least 860 journalists have been “arrested, detained or executed by the authorities” there.
In January 2016, Tehran exchanged the journalist from Washington Post Jason Rezaian against seven Iranians detained in the United States. Correspondent in Iran, Jason Rezaian was arrested with his wife on July 22, 2014, when Iran had just accepted the relaunch of negotiations on its nuclear program, suspected by the international community of hiding a military component. His wife was released after two months of detention. Accused of “espionage” for the benefit of the United States, he had spent 544 days in Evin prison, in northern Tehran, where he claimed to have been ill-treated, deprived of sleep and threatened with death. be beheaded.
On the subject: United States-Iran: the release of four Americans ends a crazy week
Iran has more than a dozen Westerners – also holders of Iranian passports for the most part – in prison or under house arrest, like the Franco-Iranian researcher from Sciences Po Fariba Adelkhah, imprisoned for two years.
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